All the recent talk about bird behavior reminded me of interesting BW
behavior my wife and I observed over a year ago.
We have 2" holes under our eaves to vent the roof space. The holes are
screened on the inside to keep birds out. The holes are about 6" apart and
go all around the house under the roof. This is typical of many houses.
Early in Dec. 1993 we found that a BW was roosting during the night in
one of these holes. It would sit with its breast facing inward, apparently
to keep warm. All you could see when looking at the dark hole was the
outside of its tail sticking down from the hole.
The BW would fly into a rhododendren bush next to the house, and
underneath the hole it used, about dusk each night. Then it would fly up
to the hole. It would stay there all night and leave at dawn. It used the
same hole about 90% of the time. The hole was located about 6 ft. from the
front door. There was a porch light that was on from before dark to about
11pm each night. The other 10% of the time it used one of the other nearby
holes.
Two or three times, after this BW was perched in its hole, we saw another
BW try to fly up and land in a nearby hole. But, it never could figure out
how to do it.
We would watch for it each night and really worried when it did not show
up. Fortunately, this only happened 5-6 times over three months. We last
saw the BW the first week in March 1994.
We hoped it would repeat this behavior this past winter, but never did
see it. We live on 0.9 acres which is mostly wooded with a variety of
trees and bushes. We have at least two BW's in the area all year long.
We were wondering if anyone else has observed similar behavior?

Hugh Jennings
Crossroads area, Bellevue
gfjc96a at prodigy.com